Columnist: Erdoğan imposes Twitter ban on Ankara Mayor Gökçek

Turkish President and Chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has imposed a Twitter ban on Ankara Mayor Melih Gökçek, with whom he met in his palace on Thursday, a Hürriyet columnist wrote on Sunday.

Before the meeting at the presidential palace in Ankara it was speculated that Erdoğan would ask Gökçek to resign as part of his efforts to overhaul the AKP.

“President Erdoğan had told Melih Gökçek: From now on you will stop making waves on Twitter. You will expend all your energy on Ankara. I don’t want to see you in polemics, etc., with others. I want you to focus for the next two years on the problems of Ankara,” wrote Ahmet Hakan in his column in Hürriyet on Sunday.

Following the meeting Gökçek, who has been mayor of Ankara since 1994, claimed on Twitter that he had presented his plans for a museum to be built across from the presidential palace.